SWORDS AND PLANETS: THE MANY WORLDS OF JOHN CARTER AND PALS

READER ADVISORY: THIS POST CONTAINS A HIGH ALMOST TOXIC LEVEL OF FAN BOY NERDINESS, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

This is not a review of the movie John Carter. Yes, I saw the movie and yes, I enjoyed it. It's a good looking, decently acted adventure movie with a lot of action, an attempt at an emotional connection and a couple of compelling main characters. It could have used at least 20 minutes carved out of it but it's a very entertaining B movie; if you you've seen the trailers and liked them, chances are you'll like the movie

But this really isn't going to be a review of the movie. Rather, I want to look at the subgenre of fantasy/science fiction that Edgar Rice Burroughs pretty much created with his John Carter novels, or more correctly, the Barsoom series.

With the publication of A Princess of Mars, the first novel in the Barsoom series, Burroughs created or at least popularized a new subgenre: One that has a hero of Earth somehow (often magically or through some form of science so underexplained it appears magical) transported to a strange planet where he must use his physical prowess (often with a sword, sometimes a gun, sometimes a combo of both) to free some of the planet's peoples from tyranny and bag himself a princess. There's almost always a princess. There are a few names for this genre; Sword and Planet, Planetary Romance, Interplanetary. For the sake of this post, we'll stick with Interplanetary

I'm not even going to try to make this post a comprehensive look at this genre. Burroughs published Princess in 1917 and stories of this sort were being published right up into the '90's. Since most of this kind of story were published as series, there are hundreds (at least) of Interplanetary books by various authors. I'm going to stick to the authors and writers that I know; I stumbled upon the Barsoom books in the 70's and was a pretty ardent fan of the Interplanetary genre for a couple of decades

The Barsoom books were rediscovered in the late 1960's and they inspired a whole gamut of imitators, these are the books that I initially read but even during Burroughs time, the stories were so popular that his contemporaries dove headlong into the heady universe of swords, aliens, monsters and barely clad princesses.

Interplanetary stories are not what many today refer to as a Fantasy; they do not take place in some mythical fully imagined world like Middle Earth that really has not connection to ours. They are science fiction in that they are located on alien worlds, some known to us such as the Mars of the John Carter stories or the Jovian moon of Callisto in Lin Carter's Jandar stories; or unknown worlds, such as Robert E Howard's Almuric or Leigh Brackett's Skaith.

H. Rider Haggard and A. Merritt wrote "lost civilization" stories where our hero finds some forgotten pocket of Earth where Vikings and/or dinosaurs still rule. Burroughs himself played in this arena with his Pellucidar stories that take place in the middle of the Earth. Merritt wrote The Ship of Ishtar of which I am quite fond; it features a contemporary man transported to an exotic world of swords, ships and evil wizards, except this world is ancient Earth replete with all its mythologies. It's an adventure story that follows many of the Interplanetary conventions but because it does take place on Earth, I would not qualify it as such

If Burroughs invented the Interplanetary story he soon had competition. Otis Adelbert Kline was a literary agent who was a pulp writer in his own vein. He produced Interplanetary novels himself, such as Planet of Peril; it's such a Burroughs rip off that the two engaged in a very public feud over the contents.

Burroughs was a pulp writer, he wrote to make a living, his style is sometimes difficult to process and his characters wooden, but he had an incredible imagination and the details of his world are impressive; from the outfits to the music to the manners of court, Burroughs had Barsoom fully realized. Kline was a hack and a derivative one at that. None of this is art, it's pulp fiction but you can buy into Burroughs work, he would never win an award for writing style but he knew how to keep his stories moving and you are often wide eyed at that imagination. Kline is difficult to read, mostly because he is so damn boring

Robert E Howard was another pulp writer of the time. Like Burroughs he wrote any kind of adventure story that would sell but nowadays he is best known as the creator of Conan. He wrote one Interplanetary, the only of his stories that could be considered science fiction. Almuric is not a great novel and it's not a great Interplanetary. It's a typical Howard book, fast moving, intense, and sometimes graced with an economy of language that could be surprisingly descriptive; it also featured a typically dour Howard character.  The dourness does however distinguish this novel from other early Interplanetaries; whereas John Carter is squared jawed utterly heoric and totally clean cut, Almuric's Essai Cane is something akin to a sociopath. He has very little conscience and is more than happy to use deadly violence to solve just about any problem

An interesting side note here: Almuric is not only and unusual Howard book in that it is "science fiction" but it is also novel length, and he is known to have only written four novels. This book was found, unpublished, after Howard's death. It seemed to have come out of the blue and has led to speculation that Howard didn't write the book at all. It's postulated that the novel was written by Howard's agent. And that agent is (please insert "duh duh duh" sound effect) Otis Adelbert Kline. Seriously, how juicy is that

Kline was not the only writer to drink deeply from the well of Burroughs. When the Barsoom novels were republished in the late 60's with Frank Frazetta book covers it inspired a whole new invasion of Earth heroes duelling under alien suns. About 30 years separate the original publishing dates from the arrival and although pulp fiction was still alive and well (these were the hey days of the Ace Double books, action oriented sci fi stories that featured two short novels published on one volume) writing styles had changed .. or so you think. Many of the new Interplanetaries published at that time not only followed Burroughs formula but also emulated his nearly Victorian language.

At any rate, the genre proved popular all over again. The 1970's saw the first publication of the Dray Prescott series by Alan Burt Akers, otherwise known as British sci fi author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer was a contemporary pulp writer and I was never a huge fan of his books, but the Kregan books work pretty well. His hero, Prescott, is a 19th century seaman (which explains his familiarity with swords) who finds himself on the alien world Kregan in the constellation of Skorpio

Burrogh's Barssom books ran to about 10 novesl, the Kregan series features over 50 novels, published into the mid 1980's. No, I did not read them all. I read four or five and they worked pretty well. The action is good, the world is well realized and Prescott is a likeable hero. As is the norm for these books they are written in the first person and Prescott's tone is befitting to his time which allows Bulmer to logic why books written in the 70's use similar language to those penned at the turn of the century

One of Burroughs conceits was to interject himself into the stories. John Carter is presented as Burroughs nephew and he brings his self narrated stories to said uncle so that he can tell the world. Lin Carter uses a similar technique in his Jandar books which I'll discuss in a bit. The Kregan novels take it to a whole new level, some of the books were published with Dray Prescott listed at the author of the story

Jandar of Callisto was an Interplanetary novel published in 1972 and is the first in an 8 novel series. It tells the storey of John Dark (whose name is interpreted as Jandar by his alien buddies) a military helicopter pilot who crashes into Ankor Wat and is transported to Callisto, a moon of Jupiter.

The series was written by Lin Carter. Carter was an extremely gifted fantasy editor and one of the most knowledgeable people at that time about all things fantastic in fiction. He wrote his own stories and he wrote a lot but pretty much everything he penned was a pastiche; the Jandar novels follows the Burroughs blueprint but John Dark is a contemporary hero and his narration is presented in a clean, unadorned style. The books are a romp, Carter knows exactly to whom he is paying homage and there is a good deal of tongue in cheek humour. Like his man Burroughs, Carter interjects himself into the story, he finds the Jandar manuscripts and edits them (hey it's what the man did) so we may follow the adventures of his friend up there on Callisto

Whereas long series represent the norm in this genre, there were a few single novels such as Almuric and at least one duology that I'm fond of, the Llarn books by Gardner F Fox. The two novels follow the ERB conventions but Fox, a professional comic book writer, has his own imagination. The books were originally published in the mid 60's and the books reflect that time period by having Llarn give his world a post atomic war setting.

Speaking of comic book writers, although the focus of this post is on novels I'd be remiss not to mention an Interplanetary comic book series from the mid 70's of which I was quite fond. Warlord is a comic book series written and illustrated by Mike Grell and published by DC Comics. Travis Morgan is an air force pilot who crashes into Skartaris a world inside Earth's hollow core (a nod to ERB's Pellucidar story) Grell follows the Interplanetary conventions with a few modern flairs; besides his affinity with a sword, Morgan brings with him a .44 automag pistol ... "Do you feel lucky alien barbarian? Well, do ya?"

As I stated earlier, one of the names for this subgenre of science fiction is Planetary Romance. There is always a love story between our Earthly hero and an alien girl, usually some kind of princess though she may be hiding from her enemies (can anyone say Princess Leia). Not only did some of the revival Interplanetaries stick true to this romantic theme but they also pretty much followed the chaste, pure hearted love story that Burroughs created. Now, everyone on Barsoom is naked, including the lovely Deja Thoris ...

 .. and that must have been quite racy to Burrough's readers but other than that, the relationship is pretty pure .. as are those in many of the later Interplanetary books. But that would not last for long. Enter Richard Blade

This is a long series, over 30 books published between 1969 and 1984. Credited to Jeffrey Lord it was actually written by several authors, including Roland Green and Ray Nelson, a pretty good sci fi author under his own name. One could see why the authors were happy to give up their names for this series. It's not only pulp, it's schlock; the hero Blade is a British 007 style spy who is transported to various world in Dimension X to chop off a lot of heads and fuck a lot of women ... and this is how this series sets itself apart from others of the time. Blade was porn and for once the stories lived up to the racy cover art

But Blade wasn't the only Interplanetary hero swinging more than his sword. Sex did begin to creep into the genre and yes, in some ways, pretty creepily. Indeed, it's time to talk about Gor

Gor is a series of 30 novels written by John Norman that begain publishing in 1966 and is apparantly still ongoing. They feature the adventures of Earthman Tarl Cabot on Gor, also known as counter earth. The books are well written, the world incredibly detailed much in the way of Burroughs; it nods to the Barsoom series but carries on in its own style. It owes a lot to Fantasy novels, where the cultures of the world reflect ancient earthly cultures

The author, John Norman, is actually John Frederick Lange, a professor of philosophy who specializes in questions of morality and cultural conventions of morality. This is where Gor becomes interesting and for some, troublesome. The first few books of the series are very good, straight ahead Interplanetary adventures but as the series goes along, Lange's philosophy becomes to seep through. On Gor, women are subservient to men, they are slaves, both sexually and spiritually and as Earth women appear on Counter Earth they begin to realize that this may be the natural state for a woman in a relationship

Some people were turned off by these concepts but many people fond them appealing; there is an entire subculture of sexuality based upon the Gor novels, the terms and rituals from the books have found their ways into people's sexual recreations. My issue with the whole thing is this: When the themes began to be introduced in the novel I read them almost as satire, a kind of exaggeration of the Victorian male/female sensibilities of the original novels and I could go there. But Norman is apparantly quite serious about this and the books became more about a slave and her master than it did about Tarl Cabot kicking ass. I left the series around the 5th book

As a side note, like John Carter, the Gor books were filmed ... they are difficult to find. We should be extremely grateful for that. Let's leave it at that

But not all attempts at sexuality in Interplanetary books are either juvenile porn or mildly creepy lifestyle suggestions. This is where we bring in Andrew J Offutt. Offutt is a professional science ficition and fantasy author who has worked in a variety of styles over his long career including penning a few Conan novels. He wrote a few Interplanetary novels, including Ardor on Aros, a rather satirical take on Burroughs and I'm not sure if he meant to riff Gor as well, but he did: In this novel the Earthman adventurer becomes the serf of a female alien for whom he does quests and he pays her off with sex. Offutt can write and he's awfully smart and this is a very good satire in that it pokes fun at the genre while at the same time reading as a fairly good Interplanetary

Enough about sex, let's look at sexuality in Interplanetaries or more properly, gender. This is not, historically, that is a genre terribly kind to females. The books were primarily written by men and for men. There were always women but they were to be rescued and to be possessed ... and in Gor, literally possessed. In the Barsoom books, Princes Deja could fight, she had a voice, but she also had to be constantly rescued by Captain Carter. The role of women was upgraded in some of the later novels, I recall a fairly compentent fighting princess in the Jandar books but still, ERB's blue print was faithfully followed with just a few upgrades. Although fantasy novels and a few sword and sorcery novels featured female leads, I don't recall any Interplanetary stories with a female hero

Time to talk about Leigh Brackett. Brackett was a well respected writer not only of science fiction and fantasy novels but also in Hollywood. She is credited as having contributed to the script for the Big Sleep and The Empire Strikes Back among others. Most of her science fiction was adventure oriented but would be pushing the envelope of what an Interplanetary novel would be. Her great series hero was Erik John Stark. Stark lives in a future where space travel is common and some of the planets of our Solar System have their own sentient species. He is a human raised by the natives of Mercury and although he is rescued by another Earth man, he can always tap into his animalistic nature to get out of a jam

Some of these alien cultures, like the ancient world of Mars, still employ swords as well as ray guns but because Stark travels from world to by spaceship and the Martian civillization is known to Earth, I'm not sure if these stories actually qualify as Interplanetaries. Stark also has a series of adventures on the far flung planet of Skaith and these are some of the best adventure oriented sci fi stories you can read; Skaith, under the Ginger Star is a rich and exotic world with many indigenous cultures and lots of action .. but an Interplanetary novel it may not be

The one Brackett novel that can qualify for this genre is The Sword of Rhiannon. The tale takes place on Brackett's standard version of Mars; an ancient world, once environmentally and culturally rich that now, in the time of interplanetary travel is a desert shell of its former glory. Our hero (not Stark) is being chased by Martian gangsters and finds himself in a cave where ancient Martian tech transports him to the planet's far past, where there were oceans and a vibrant dangerous culture on Mars. In one sense, it is reminiscent of Merritt's Ship of Ishtar but instead of being transported to Earth's past, our fighter goes into the past of an alien world. What really sets this book apart is Brackett's writing; while still being muscular and efficient, there is a lyrical quality to it that you don't find in a lot of these books

Interplanetary or Sword and Planet novels have pretty much fallen off the literary map. They died in the US before they did in Europe. Alan Burt Aker's Dray Prescott novels stop being published in the US around number 37 but kept being published in Germany up to number 52. I've read that a few novels in the genre have been recently published both on paper and as ebooks, like Al Sarrantonio's Master of Mars series but I have yet to read those; still I think it's fair to say that Interplanetary is a fairly dead genre.

I was kind of hoping that the John Carter movie might revitalize the genre, not only in film but in print but that doesn't seem to likely to happen. For reasons that have more to do with internal Studio incompentence than the movie itself, it's being viewed as a failure. I have a feeling it will do quite well when released on disc or as downloads in in the overseas market but I don't know if we'll see anymore Interplanetary movies let alone novels.

I think these books were incredibly influential. Not only did Burroughs spawn a literary genre that produced hundreds of novels over decades, you can see the influence in movies like Star Wars and probably Flash Gordon as well. Some of the conventions of the genre are silly but at heart these are adventure stories, suspension of disbelief stories; besides the action what keeps you reading is the thrill of discovery, it's world building, I think ERB is still the master but Kenneth Bulmer as Alan Burt Akers is right up there, as well Norman. If we consider Brackett's Skaith novels to fit the category .. and they may not .. she'd be right there at the top as well.

Some of these novels are still in print, go hunting on Amazon or if you can still find one, your local used book store. John Carter is there, sailing on Dray Drescott's ship, above them Tarl Cabot is circling on his tarn, being guided to Callisto by Jandar and down in the hold, Eric John Stark is growling to his wolves ...